An Adventure
by Zoinks81
Summary: My answer to all of the stories where Lincoln dies. Don't let the genres fool you, I just picked them because in the end I don't even know how to classify this story.


So I wrote this as a little story that you can always come and read after you read something where Lincoln dies. You can, in essence, tack this on to those stories as a "what happens next" kind of thing. This was a pure joy to write and I got kind of creative with it. Hope it's not too wierd for you guys. Apologized for any spelling or grammar mistakes, I'm sure they are in there. Enjoy.

As always I do not own The Loud House or any of it's characters.

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An Adventure

Lincoln woke up in a cold dark room. The light above buzzed like a hornets nest and flickered like a neon candle. He looked around and noticed the complete lack of, well anything really. The floor appeared to be concrete, normally gray, but with the light it had a yellow tint to it. The walls were bare, appearing to be the same as the floor. There was however, one small exception, the metal door that made the white haired boy wonder if he had been taken captive by some secret evil faction or aliens with a top secret bunker mile's underground. There was something else odd to, something that should have scared the living hell out of him. He couldn't feel anything. Not a damned thing.

There was no pain, no aching muscles or joints from sleeping on a hard concrete floor. His heart was not beating rapidly as fear over took him. Infact, not only was he not afraid at all, but he could not even feel his heart beating. The last thing that made him wonder just what was going on was the fact that the sensation of the cold he thought he felt, it was all in his head. He assumed it was cold, as concrete usually was if not warmed by sun. A dark room such as what he was in, well he assumed it would be rather chilly in here. Yet he could not feel it. It was like he remembered what all of those feelings were, his mind desperately holding on to them as they faded away from him.

Lincoln turned as he heard foot steps coming down the hall just outside the door. He knew there was a hallway there as the footsteps echoed and took forever to reach him. They stopped beyond the door, and were followed by the loud metal clunks and clanks of locks being unlocked. The door creaked open with a heavy metal moan. Standing in the doorway was a young girl just a few years older than he was. Her skin was as pale as his sister Lucy's and she wore a yellow blouse with pink flowers printed on it. The blouse was tucked into a pair of fades jeans, the knees shredded and revealing the paled naked skin just beyond the denim. Strawberry blonde hair curled around a round face that shined with a warm and bright smile.

"Sorry I'm late." The girl said. "My name is Sarah."

"Uh ... hi, I'm ..." Lincoln started to say.

"Lincoln Loud, yes I know."

"Where exactly are we?" Lincoln asked.

"Well Lincoln, I regret to inform you that you are dead. Welcome to purgatory." She said with a cheery tone and that same warm smile.

If it were possible, and he sure as hell was trying, Lincoln would have fainted at the news he had just received. For a fraction of a second he wanted to dismiss the claim, raise his voice and argue that she was just messing with him. Yet something inside, like a voice that echoed from where his heart should have been beating, told him that she was not lying. He was dead.

"How?" Was the only word Lincoln managed to get out.

"Let's not dwell on the morbid details of your demise." Sarah said. "The point here, is that you are not among the living anymore and now we have to figure out what to do with you."

"What to do with me? You mean I don't just go to heaven?" Lincoln asked.

"You can go where ever you like." She told him.

"What the hell."

"Yeah you can go there." Sarah said. "Though I would not recommend it. Kind of warm this time of year."

Lincoln was at a loss, not know what was going on and also wondering how he got to this strange place with this odd young girl. He tried to force his memory to replay the moments of his death, yet he kept getting various flashes of different possible explanations. In one vision he was in a hospital bed with tubes running out of his arms, his body wasting away, being eaten by a terrible disease. Another vision should him being attacked, murdered in a horrible and brutal manner by a strange man. Another vision showed him dropping dead from a blockage to his heart, making it stop and sending him to the floor as family gathered around him. Yet another vision showed him taking a knife to his wrists, distraught by the rejection of his family. All of these felt so real that he did not know what was the truth and what was the twisted vision of cruel storytellers.

"It would be better if you just let the past be the past." Sarah told him. "The harder you focus on your death the more painful the memories will become."

"So what now?" He asked. "Do I meet God or something?"

"Depends. Do you believe in God?" She said.

Lincoln had never really thought about it. His family never really went to church, not unless there was a wedding or a funeral. He wondered what kind of funeral his family was going to have for him.

"I guess so. I don't really know." Lincoln said.

"Don't worry about it, we get that alot." Sarah said. "Follow me, I want to show you something."

The young girl started to walk down the hallway. Lincoln quickly followed after her, noticing that there were several other doors like the one he had just come out of along both sides of the hallway. It reminded him of a prison movie he once saw with his dad. They sat on the couch and ate popcorn, both laughing at the bad acting and terrible fight scenes. It was one of the rare moments he and his dad had really spent time together.

Sarah led him out of the hallway and through a door to yet another hallway. This time there were no large metal doors with small concrete rooms. On the right were several wood doors that appeared to lead to offices. Each door had a name printed on it. On the left there were large glass windows that looked out over a city that made Lincoln wonder just what the hell was going on. Tall buildings reached out towards the sky, which was a perfect blue with not a cloud in it. People below walked the busy streets looking like ants crawling around a model city. He could hear the honks of cars as their drives expressed their frustration at other drivers and pedestrians. It looked like what he assumed New York City would look like.

"I thought you said I was dead." Lincoln said, not removing his eyes from the world below.

"You are Lincoln." Sarah said. "This is the afterlife."

"But it looks like back home."

"Yeah alot of people choose to see it this way." She told him.

Lincoln stepped away from the window and looked back to Sarah, his eyebrows raised as he tried to understand what she had just said to him. Even if he was not already well past the point of lost, he would have had trouble understanding what she said. None of this made a lick of sense to him.

"You see we are all just particles of energy floating in a dust cloud of more energy." She explained to him, her arms moving around like she were in a wave pool. "You could call it a soul if that makes more sense to you. Some people even refer to it as Chi." She stopped waving her arms around and came over to Lincoln. "This is what we are when we leave our bodies. Then we float up to that dust cloud and join others. The remnants of our previous lives tends to stick around, and we often choose to see that dust cloud as how we would perceive the afterlife."

Lincoln looked to the girl dumbfounded. He was a decent student when he was alive, but what she had just explained to him made him feel like he was at one of Lisa's lectures. He was still coming to terms with the fact that he was dead, now he had to somehow wrap his mind around the fact that the afterlife was whatever he wanted it to be.

"So are you saying that this is like my own personal heaven?" Lincoln asked.

"No. Well kinda." Sarah laughed. "See you and me, we see this place like how it is now." She pointed out as the concrete jungle that seemed to stretch on forever. "Where as Roy, down there in office 14C, sees the place as the standard floating clouds and harps. But we are all still in the same place at the same time. It's just our perception of the world around us that is different."

Lincoln's eyes grew wide as he raised his hands to his head and made a motion like two bombs had just went off near his head. Sarah covered her mouth and giggled at the white haired boy and his funny gesture.

"So you said we have to figure out where I am going?" Lincoln said.

"Oh yeah." Sarah blushed. "Sorry I got caught up with everything. Yeah we need to find out where you will be staying and what you will do."

"Wait, like an apartment and a job?" Lincoln said.

"The apartment yes." Sarah told him. "You will need to live somewhere. As far as the job goes, that is really more up to you. Seeing as how this is the afterlife you don't really have to work, its just more out of habit really."

"So no money then?"

"Yes and no." Sarah said. "There is, but you don't really need it. It's just another force of habit kind of thing."

Lincoln had to admit that he liked the idea of having his own apartment and not having to work unless he wanted to. It was like so many of the dreams he used to have. Still, it would take getting used to, not having his family around to talk to or bug him. He wondered how they were taking his death.

"Well we should go and meet Mr. Grim, so he can set you up and everything." Sarah told him. She started to walk toward an elevator at the end of the hall. She stopped and pressed the arrow button, waiting for the elevator to reach the floor they were on.

"So is Mr. Grim like death then?" Lincoln asked.

"A manifestation of death yes." Sarah said. "He is like the CEO of purgatory. It's like the waiting room of the afterlife."

"So that room I just came from?"

"Is a materialization chamber. Where the soul appears after its departure from the physical realm."

The doors to the elevator dinged and opened. Sarah stepped in followed by Lincoln. Sarah pressed the button for the top floor and leaned back against the rear wall of the elevator and listened to the music playing over the speakers. Lincoln looked to the girl and could not help but smile. He was still sad that he was dead, and that he would not see his family for a very long time, but he was glad Sarah was here to help him through all of this.

The elevator came to a stop and the doors dinged again, sliding open to reveal a room filled with a large amount of cubicles with men and women walking around in shirts and ties. It was alot like what his dad's office was like when he used to work for the IT company. Again, not how he had imagined the afterlife when he was still alive. They walked along an aisle passed all the cubicles and people working at their desks. Lincoln was a little curious as to what everyone there was doing, but decided to just leave it be. He was not sure he wanted to know all the boring details of the building he was currently in.

They came to the end of the aisle where a stout woman sat at a desk and guarded a pair of double wooden doors with a golden frame that shimmered and shined in the light. The woman looked over a pair of dark rimmed glasses that hung just off her nose as she smacked on some gum in her mouth and flipped through a magazine on her desk. Even in the afterlife being a secretary seemed like boring work.

"Afternoon Cheryl." Sarah said.

"Sarah." Cheryl said, not looking up from her magazine. She reached under her desk and pressed a button that buzzed for a few seconds, then motioned for them to continue through the doors.

Sarah led Lincoln passed the stout Cheryl who continued to sit like a guard dog/secretary as she stared into the magazine on her desk. They entered a large office that was decorated with various paintings of landscapes and animals. The floor was wood, matching the side panel along the walls that outlined the off-white paint job. At the end of the room, just passed the small coffee table and two black leather chairs, was an oak desk stained with a red tint. Behind the desk was an elderly African American man with dark hair that was going white around the temples. He motioned for them to come in and have a seat at the two chairs in front of the desk.

"Welcome Lincoln." Mr. Grim said, his voice a soothing mellow tone that made you forget what he was. "First let me start by saying I am sorry that he are here at such a young age. It always breaks my heart to see kids have to come before me."

Lincoln forced an awkward smile. He was sure that Mr. Grim was telling the truth, he really had no reason to lie. Yet if he was death, then Lincoln wondered why he could not just let people keep on living until they were old and ready to go. He wanted to ask, but was far to intimidated to question the ways of life and death to ... well death.

"Uh thanks." Lincoln said.

"Well I guess we should get you situated here." Mr. Grim said. He pulled a dark blue folder out of his desk and handed it to Lincoln. "This is your starter booklet. It contains all the information about where you are and should answer alot of the basic question you may have. You can read it when we find you a place to live and you settle in."

Lincoln looked at the folder briefly then placed in his lap, looking back to Mr. Grim he nodded to show that he understood.

"Good." Mr. Grim continued. "Now this little gadget." Mr. Grim pulled out a small black phone that looked very much like the kind of phone his sister Lori had always carried around with her. "This is an Oracle, a device that works alot like the smart phones you had back in the physical realm. It can help you with whatever else you need. It also has lots of games, apps, and all kinds of goodies on it." He swiped the screen showing Lincoln all the different apps on it. "No memory cap, and everything is already on it. Now there is one app you may find interesting, although I don't recommend using it for sometime." He tapped one of the apps that looked like a cartoon drawing of the Earth. Up popped a screen and a graphic that said _Viewer_. "This little app allows you to type in your name and you can search for you family back in the physical realm. It allows you to watch them in real time, seeing what they are doing no matter where they are." He handed the device over to Lincoln. "Again I do not recommend using it for a while as it can be very depressing watching your loved ones grieve."

Lincoln looked at the screen and knew he was going to be checking in on his family later. He knew it would hurt, but he had to know how they were doing. He looked to Sarah who frowned, he knew she was aware of what he was thinking.

"So that just leave us with the question of where you will be living then." Mr. Grim said. He looked over to a computer that sat on his desk and began to type away.

Lincoln could barely make out the images on the screen from where he was sitting. It appeared to be a list of names, most likely buildings. Mr. Grim scrolled through the list, stopping every so often to rub his chin as he contemplated a likely candidate for Lincoln's living quarters. Finally, he stopped, again rubbed his chin and squinted at the screen before nodding in agreement with himself.

"I think I have just the place." Mr. Grim said.

"Cool."

"There is a nice little building near the park just off Sixth street and Sunflower avenue." Mr. Grim said. "Fifth floor, apartment 5D. It should have a very nice view of Kensington park and the pond."

Lincoln noticed that Sarah was trying to contain a small smile. He tilted his and head and looked at her confused as to what she was smiling about. Was the place really that good? Did he really luck out or something?

"I believe Sarah is smiling because she is quite happy with the arrangement." Mr. Grim said, reading the look on Lincoln's face. "She lives in the same building." Mr. Grim smiled.

Lincoln blushed, realizing that Sarah was smitten with him. Just a few moments into his afterlife and he had already found a girl who had a crush on him. He could only imagine what his sisters would have said if they saw him now.

After the meeting with Mr. Grim, Sarah had escorted him down to the first floor and out to the street. They stood around as Lincoln took it all in, the sights and sounds of a city so real that he could have sworn this was all just one of Luan's elaborate practical jokes. He half expected his his sister to jump out at any moment and scream, "Gotcha!". But he knew that was not going happen.

Lincoln looked at Sarah, her bangs were now hanging just above her eyes, the light shade of red brought out the green in the two emeralds that stared back at him. She was pretty, like a red-headed angel. He smiled and leaned in to hug her.

"Thank you for being the one to help me through this today." He whispered in her ear.

"It was my pleasure Lincoln." She told him. "I hope we can see more of each other."

"You can count on it." He told her.

"So what are you planning to do?" She asked him.

Lincoln looked around at the towering buildings and the people walking the streets. He was a boy in a far off land that would never grow up. He remembered a line he had always loved from Peter Pan, _To die would be an awfully big adventure._

"I'm going to go on an adventure." Lincoln said. "An awfully big adventure."

End

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Well hope you guys got a kick out of that story. Leave a review if you want, it always makes my day to hear what you think.


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